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The US Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (ACHDNC) has recommended that an additional condition be added to the panel of conditions for which all newborns receive screening. (PHG Foundation)

DOCTORS have uncovered the first evidence that fathers of test-tube babies may be passing on their infertility to their sons. A new study has found that boys conceived through IVF treatment involving a single sperm being directly injected into a female egg often inherit shorter fingers, a trait known to be associated with infertility. (Times Online)

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A legislative subcommittee approved a measure Thursday giving inheritance rights to Iowa children born up to two years after their father’s death. The measure would mean children conceived through in vitro fertilization would be entitled to benefits such as Social Security survivor payments even if they were gestated after a parent’s death. (Chicago Tribune)

UK media coverage of plans to expand the list of conditions for which pre-natal genetic diagnosis (PGD) is permissible in the UK implies that some of the disorders are not serious. (PHG Foundation)

Often one reads about historical failures in medical ethics, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study or the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, and one reflects with relief that health care has progressed in our society to the point where such abuses are no longer possible. Then one stumbles upon an occasional systemic failure so grievous, such as the amputation of a patient’s wrong leg, that it nearly defies credibility, and reminds us that we are still vulnerable to medical exploitation and misconduct. If the facts as alleged in the media and court filings prove accurate, then the treatment of a pregnant Tallahassee mother, Samantha Burton, by her obstetrician, Jana Bures-Forsthoefel, may well rank among the most egregious abuses perpetrated against a patient by her caregiver since the triumph of the patients’ rights movement in the 1970s. (Huffington Post)

IVF clinics are destroying embryos with relatively minor genetic conditions such as thalassaemia, the blood disorder suffered by Pete Sampras. (Telegraph)

Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy (Volume 13, Number 1, February 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Molecular Medicine and Concepts of Disease: The Ethical Value of a Conceptual Analysis of Emerging Biomedical Technologies” by Marianne Boenink, 11-23.
• “Rational Suicide: Philosophical Perspectives on Schizophrenia” by Jeanette Hewitt, 25-31.
• “‘It’s Intense, You Know.’ Nurses’ Experience in Caring for Patients Requesting Euthanasia,” by Yvonne Denier, Bernadette Dierckx De Casterlé, Nele De Bal, and Chris Gastmans; 41-48.
• “How to Reveal Disguised Paternalism” by Niels Lynoe, Niklas Juth, and Gert Helgesson; 59-65.
• “Problems Faced with Legislating for IVF Technology in a Roman Catholic Century” by Pierre Mallia, 77-87.

For couples trying to have a baby, the No. 1 question that can be answered with a simple test is, Am I pregnant? No. 2 may soon be, Is it a boy or a girl? (Los Angeles Times)

Senior fertility doctors rejected calls for a ban on women over 50 receiving fertility treatment at British clinics after it emerged that a 59-year-old woman was in the process of trying to obtain IVF at the London Women’s Clinic in Harley Street. (Times Online)

When Amillia Taylor was born at Baptist Children’s Hospital in Miami on October 24, 2006, she made headlines across the world. She weighed just 280 grams and was 240 centimetres long. More importantly, she was born after just 21 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy—the youngest premature baby known to have ever made it. (The Times of India)

Four years ago, Donald Robinson Hollingsworth and Sean Hollingsworth, a gay couple living in New Jersey, set in motion their plan to become first-time parents. They contracted with a woman to carry an embryo from donated eggs and sperm from Sean Hollingsworth. The surrogate mother, Donald Hollingsworth’s sister Angelia Robinson, gave birth to twins in 2006. A legal issue soon arose: Did Ms. Robinson have parental rights over the twins? (Wall Street Journal)

Children conceived from donor sperm during the fertility-industry boom of the 1980s are now becoming adults, and many of them believe they have a basic right to know their genetic heritage. In Canada, as in many other countries, sperm donors are anonymous. But some countries have changed that policy. Debate remains, however, about which rights are more important: the donor’s right to privacy or the offspring’s right to full identity. (CMAJ)

Journal of Medical Ethics (Volume 36, Issue 01, January 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Clinical Ethics: Ascribing Intentions in Clinical Decision-making” by L A Jansen and J S Fogel, 2-6.
• “Clinical Ethics: ‘It’s Crucial They’re Treated as Patients’: Ethical Guidance and Empirical Evidence Regarding Treating Doctor-Patients” by F E fox, G J Taylor, M F Harris, K J Rodham, J Sutton, J Scott, and B Robinson; 7-11.
• “Ethics: When Physicians Forego the Doctor-patient Relationship, Should They Elect to Self-Proscribe or Curbside? An Empirical and Ethical Analysis” by J K Walter, C W Lang, and L F Ross; 19-23.
• “Law, Ethics and Medicine: The Right Not to Know and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis for Huntington’s Disease” by E Asscher and B-J Koops, 30-33.
• “Research Ethics: Payment for Participation in Research: A Pursuit for the Poor?” by M Stones and J McMillan, 34-36.
• “Research Ethics: An Investigation of Patients’ Motivations for their Participation in Genetics-related Research” by N Hallowell, S Cooke, G Crawford, A Lucassen, M Parker, and C Snowdon; 37-45.
• “Teaching and Learning Ethics: A Practical Approach to Teaching Medical Ethics” by S Mills and D C Bryden, 50-54.

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (Volume 19, Issue 01, January 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Not Dead Yet: Controlled Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation, Consent, and the Dead Donor Rule” by Dale Gardiner and Robert Sparrow, 17-26.
• “Just Caring: In Defense of Limited Age-Based Healthcare Rationing” by Leonard M. Fleck, 27-37.
• “Actualizable Potential, Reproduction, and Embryo Research: Bringing Embryos into Existence for Different Purposes or Not at All” by Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, 51-60.
• “Consequentialism Without Consequences: Ethics and Embryo Research” by Sarah Chan and John Harris, 61-74.
• “Choosing Deafness with Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis: An Ethical Way to Carry On a Cultural Bloodline?” by Silvia Camporesi, 86-96.
• “When is My Genetic Information Your Business? Biological, Emotional, and Financial Claims to Knowledge” by Ruth Wilkinson, 110-117.
• “Dignity: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Still Counting” by Doris Schroeder, 118-125.
• “Human Rights and Genetic Technologies” by D. Micah Hester and Alissa Swota, 126-127.
• “Human Rights and American Bioethics: Resistance is Futile” by George J. Annas, 133-141.

A “slippery slope” to “a world of eugenics,” as bioethics authorities once worried, or a healthy life for a teenage girl? Once at the center of a science controversy, Molly Nash, 15, represents the human answer to the debate over a genetic screening technique, ” pre-implantation genetic diagnosis,” (PGD) that made headlines a decade ago. (USA TODAY)

Biologists have developed an efficient way to genetically modify human embryonic stem cells. Their approach, which uses bacterial artificial chromosomes to swap in defective copies of genes, will make possible the rapid development of stem cell lines that can both serve as models for human genetic diseases and as testbeds on which to screen potential treatments, they say. (PhysOrg)

Maxey, 51, happens to be one of the most prolific sperm donors in the country. Between 1980 and 1994, he donated at a Michigan clinic twice a week. He’s looked at the records of his donations, multiplied by the number of individual vials each donation produced, and estimated the success of each vial resulting in a pregnancy. By his own calculations, he concluded that he is the biological father of nearly 400 children, spread across the state and possibly the country. (Newsweek)

Women aged 30 to 40 who have no partner but want to conceive once they do, will be permitted, in up to half a year, to have ova removed and frozen until they are ready to become mothers. This major change in Health Ministry regulations will take place following new recommendations by the National Bioethics Council, presented this week to ministry director-general Dr. Eitan Ha’am. (Jerusalem Post)

An Irish woman has lost her legal battle to have three of her frozen embryos released to her. The Supreme Court in the Republic of Ireland dismissed the appeal which was taken by a 43-year-old mother. (BBC News)

Unable to have a baby of her own, Amy Kehoe became her own general contractor to manufacture one. For Kehoe and her husband, Scott, the idea seemed like their best hope after years of infertility. (Herald Tribune)